Hey all! As you can see, we're back! And man, has it been a rough week!
Here's the lowdown on everything that's transpired recently:
Back in April, I was contacted by my web hosts and told that the forums were causing a server CPU overload, using about 25% of the system resources, when it really should have been closer to 2%-5%. Because of this overload, they had to move my account to another server, so that it wouldn't affect the other websites they were also hosting, and told me to correct the problem ASAP or they'd have to disable my account. I made some changes to the forum to minimize items that I felt might cause the problem. Since I never heard back from my host, I thought the problem was fixed.
Fast forward to last Thursday (August 24th). The forum suddenly started spittin' and sputterin', occasionally returning an error message to folks when trying to make a post or a PM. I did some research and was told that it was possible my host had made changes to the security settings on the server, so I contacted my hosts again and asked them if this was so. I was told at that time that the forums were still causing the CPU overload, and that if I didn't correct it immediately they'd have to disable my account.
So I made plans to just do a complete reinstall of the forum software. I made a database backup as well as a complete site backup, and then proceeded to get busy Friday night, working until the wee hours of the morning, but had the basic forum back up again on Saturday morning. The forums were up for most of Saturday while I got started getting the forum mods reinstalled, and during that time several dozen posts were made. In the course of installing the mods, I had to make some minor adjustments to the database. I wasn't really comfortable doing this, since the database is what contains every message and every forum setting since they were started, but I felt I was protected since I had a backup.
Well, as things sometimes go, I messed up something on the database. 'No problem', I thought...'I have the backup.' However, when I attempted to restore the backup database, something went horribly wrong...we lost every single message posted over the past 3 years or so!! I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach!!
Anyway, I contacted my host again and was able to verify that they did indeed have a good backup copy themselves, so after paying a $75 restoration fee, the database was finally restored early this morning....and here we are.
Now....I can only assume that one (or more) of the mods I'd previously installed was/were conflicting with each other. However, I have no idea which ones. So here's what's going to happen over the next few weeks. Every couple of days I'll be re-installing one or two mods and then contacting my host to have them check to make sure we're not causing the previous CPU overload. If not, then I'll go ahead and install a couple more and then check with them again...until I install something that the hosts tell me is now causing problems, at which time it will be uninstalled.
What does this mean? Well, it means that many of the cool features you all are used to using will be temporarily unavailable. For the time being, what you see is what you get. You will not have the ability to attach pictures to a forum post, for example. Some of the other popular features like SpellCheck, the Quick Reply box, flags under each user's names, etc will not available for a little while. Please be patient, most (if not all) of the previous mods WILL eventually be reinstated over the next month or so, but it's going to be a slow process, since after each mod install I'll have to contact my host and then wait for a reply, which doesn't always happen as quickly as I'd like. Once I get the 'all clear' from them, I'll continue installing forum features.
Over the past few days I've received nearly a dozen donations from forum members to help with the costs of getting things back online, and I want to extend a HUGE thank you to you! I can't begin to tell you how much that means. You folks are definitely worth all the pulled-out hair and loss of sleep I've endured over the last week!
Hopefully this'll never happen again, but as we all know, s**t happens occasionally. However, one thing I did do to make sure any future downtimes are minimized was to sign up for my host's Premium Restore Service. It costs an additional $1.50/month, but in the event of another failure like this one, there's no restore fee and I'll get pushed to the front of the waiting line by their tech support.
Oh....one final item: after posting this message I plan to spend a little while checking things out on the forum to make sure everything's back where they're supposed to be. However, I believe the only casulty of the database failure were the posts made on Saturday while the forum was back up for a few hours...sorry, but there's nothing I could do about that. Considering what we COULD have lost, I consider ourselves very lucky! If you posted something on Saturday, please feel free to repost it.
Finally, I just wanted to apologize for the inconvenience to you all, and again thank everyone who offered support, either financial or moral. Both were instrumental in getting things fixed and running again.
Life is good!